Dance review: Joffrey 'Nutcracker' at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Robert Joffrey got just about everything marvelously right in his 1987 “Nutcracker,” the last ballet he directed before his death. 

And the Joffrey Ballet did just about perfectly as well on Thursday, when the company returned with this sparkling production to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (through Sunday).

This distinguished group of 42 dancers, now headquartered in Chicago and directed by alumnus Ashley Wheater, gave Los Angeles an assured and elegant classicism, a maturation first seen three years ago here in a production of Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella.”

With original scenes by co-founder Gerald Arpino and based on the 1940 Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production, Joffrey's "Nutcracker" is innocent and sweet without leaving the audience feeling sticky. It hues more closely than most to Tchaikovsky’s unerring musical story-telling. Set designer Oliver Smith imagines a picture book-charming Victorian America that never overwhelms the stage.

Music Center garage gets automated, now takes credit cards

The above sign has been greeting patrons who park in the Music Center’s garage, but don’t be alarmed: the new automated parking system debuting Thursday at the downtown venue will apply only to weekday daytime users. Parking for performances, like the shows themselves, will still involve the human factor. Contrary to what the sign says, attendants will be on duty.

The main change for performing arts patrons who use the eight-level, county-owned garage beneath the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theatre and Mark Taper Forum is that they'll now have the option of paying the $9 fee with a credit or debit card.

For concert-goers using the garage beneath Walt Disney Concert Hall, parking remains cash only.

Nick Chico, Los Angeles County’s manager of parking services, said Wednesday that the 1,400-car garage under 135 N. Grand Ave. is the first in a series of county-owned parking facilities that will be automated; the Disney Hall garage probably won’t be re-equipped for some years to come.

The biggest advantage, he said, is an expected end to revenue “leakage” –- a euphemism for when the human factor introduces a degree of larceny. Based on industry-wide experience, Chico said, the county’s initial $1 million investment in equipment, software and changes to garage structures and electronics promises to yield a 6% to 15% increase in parking receipts. The county keeps 81.78% of parking proceeds, with the rest going to Classic Parking, the company contracted to run the garage.

Until 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, garage users -– primarily people with business in the nearby courthouses and County Hall of Administration -– will no longer pay as they enter. They’ll zip right in and park. But when it’s time to leave, before getting back into their cars they’ll use one of four newly installed machines to pay what they owe. The machine will spit out a receipt to present at the exit gate, enabling a bar to rise and sending each vehicle on its way.

Second acts worth noting at the L.A. Phil and L.A. Opera

We like to keep reminding ourselves that the reason to attend live performances is because they are always different, and sometimes stuff happens.

On Sunday afternoon, I returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic to hear how the orchestra was getting along with Emmanuelle Haïm, the feisty French early music specialist. The orchestra had seemed a little uptight for her debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday. And I also hoped that she would include a Rameau encore that was played on Saturday but not Thursday. She did.

As it happened, the L.A. Phil program ended during intermission of the Los Angeles Opera, and stuff was happening there as well. The tenor, Vittorio Grigolo, had a head cold, and with less than a day’s notice, Charles Castronovo had agreed to substitute in the company’s penultimate performance of its production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.”

Benjamin Millepied and Music Center announce L.A. Dance Project

The Music Center is giving birth to a splashy, blue-chip contemporary ballet company devoted to artistic experimentation, with a Hollywood pedigree, to boot.

L.A. Dance Project, founded and directed by Benjamin Millepied, is being launched with a commission, expected to last two years, from Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center. Millepied, 34, is a highly sought-after choreographer with ties to major ballet troupes worldwide. He retired less than a month ago from his position as principal dancer with New York City Ballet.

Millepied leapt into the celebrity stratosphere when he started dating actress Natalie Portman, whom he met while working on the Darren Aronofsky movie “Black Swan.” The couple are engaged and have a 5-month-old son, Aleph. With Millepied's recent move out here, both now live in Los Angeles.

L.A. Dance Project will begin with just six dancers -– seven if Millepied performs -– and will have its premiere Sept. 22 and 23, 2012, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Music Center officials are announcing on  Monday. 

Millepied is not creating a traditional company but rather an “art collective,” bringing together some of his longtime friends and associates, including composer Nico Muhly and producer Charles Fabius. The goal is to collaborate with writers, artists and arts institutions in Los Angeles. One idea is to create a site-specific work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Millepied has begun talks with museum officials.

“To do a dance project today, and build a kind of vision, it’s so difficult that you cannot just take the old method,” Millepied said during an interview at a Silver Lake restaurant.

Opera review: 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Los Angeles Opera has done it again. Six years ago the company introduced the most promising young tenor in quite some time, Rolando Villazón, and paired him with the exquisite soprano Anna Netrebko as the dazzling new dream couple in a new production of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Sunday afternoon that production was back at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, this time introducing the dashing Vittorio Grigolo, the most promising young tenor since, well, Villazón. His Juliet was the sultry Nino Machaidze, and – voilà! -- a brand new dazzling dream couple for opera.

PHOTOS: L.A. Opera's 'Romeo and Juliet'

And that, I’m sorry to report, means that, once more, canary fanciers and all fascinated by the future of musical theater are required to put up with Gounod’s dreary antique.

An open house at Los Angeles Opera

More than 6,000 visitors turned out Saturday for a Los Angeles Opera open house at the Music Center, taking part in activities that included listening to the company's general director, Placido Domingo, getting a closer look at opera sets and props, and dressing up for a repast at a pretend Café Momus from "La Boheme."

Domingo performed with Jdanai Brugger, a young soprano from the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists program, with James Conlon conducting the LA Opera orchestra in a program of selections from "The Marriage of Figaro," "Cosi fan Tutte," "Madama Butterfly" and "Romeo et Juliette." Younger opera fans nestled on floor cushions in the Eva and Mark Stern Grand Hall of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the children’s opera "The Prospector."

The open house was part of the company's celebration of its 25th anniversary. For more photos, click here.

— Kelly Scott

Above: Eleanor McInnes, 4, and mother Kristin Peace, 39, don hats and other accessories at a photo booth at the LA Opera's open house Saturday. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times.

Scottish Ballet's extremes, from Kenneth MacMillan to Jorma Elo

As a self-described “Royal Ballet baby,” Scottish Ballet artistic director Ashley Page got the chance to personally know the late Sir Kenneth MacMillan, former artistic director of London’s Royal Ballet and choreographer of “Song of the Earth,” which will be on the program when Scottish Ballet performs at the Music Center Friday through next Sunday.

MacMillan, who served as artistic director from 1970 to 1977, stepped down to become the company’s principal choreographer. Page joined the company in 1976, so he came to know MacMillan, who died in 1992, more as a choreographer than a company chief. 

“Kenneth was a quite extreme personality,” Page says. “He wasn’t very happy being a director, and after I joined, he withdrew to concentrate on choreography.  He was a bit of a tortured soul.  It was reflected in quite a lot of the work that he made, the subjects he chose.”

MacMillan’s dark side is definitely reflected in “Song of the Earth,” Page says.  The work, performed to Mahler’s song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde,”  based on 8^th century Chinese poems, is, according to Page, about accepting death as a part of life.  “There is a dancer who binds the whole dance together --  it’s over an hour long -- who is the messenger of death, “ Page says.

The mournfulness, he adds, also comes from Mahler.  “It’s very much in the Chinese text, and it affected Mahler deeply,” Page says.  “While writing it, he had become aware of his heart disease, and his daughter had just died.”

That being said, Page hastens to add that the work is not morbid, even with death stalking the action. “Death is a benign presence … It’s an optimistic piece with some dark elements,” he says. “Some of it is very light, to do with youth and beauty and drinking songs.”

Contrasting tones are also the name of the game in choreographer Jorma Elo’s new work “Kings 2 Ends,” with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and minimalist Steve Reich. 

L.A. Opera's makeover, from 'Cosi' to 'Onegin' in 4 1/2 hours

Opera audiences are used to seeing performances awash in spectacle. But they rarely get to glimpse the magic that occurs between shows -- namely, “the changeover,” when one production is taken down and another takes its place. “It’s like working a huge jigsaw puzzle,” says Rupert Hemmings, director of production at Los Angeles Opera. “It may seem haphazard, but everything’s done in order.”

On this Times video by Tim French, you can watch the company make the switch between its current offerings -- Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” and Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” which continue through Oct. 9.  Neither of the imported productions is “overly scenery-heavy,” says Hemmings, so “it's a medium-sized change.” Even so, the process requires 4 1/2 hours and 45 carpenters, electricians and sound and prop people.

In the video, after the Sunday (Sept. 18) matinee of “Cosi” ends, everything on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage is left untouched until the following Wednesday, when preparations begin for that evening’s “Onegin." At 1 p.m., the crew starts collecting props and dismantling scenery. An hour later,  “Cosi” is in storage -- awaiting its turn to be seen again -- and “Onegin"'s first piece of flooring is in position.

The rural set gradually takes shape. The orchestra pit is reconfigured. Lighting checks are underway. A large (albeit shallow) lake is created by laying down sheets of Plexiglas-covered plywood, surrounding them with a wooden barrier, smoothing out two rubber liners and then running a garden hose for 90 minutes to add 800 to 1,000 gallons of water. (During intermission, the water and liners are removed; later, the Plexiglas becomes a “frozen” surface for skaters.)

By 3:30, “a lot of the big stuff is in,” says technical director Jeff Kleeman. “But there’s lots of tweaking to do.”

At 5:30, the transition from Mozart's sunny Italy to Tchaikovsky's melancholy Russia is complete. Two hours later, the curtain rises.

RELATED:

Opera review: Los Angeles Opera's 'Cosi fan Tutte'

Opera review: Los Angeles Opera's 'Eugene Onegin'

-- Karen Wada

Photo: Stage hands assemble the grassy field on the LA Opera set of "Eugene Onegin."  Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

 

L.A. Opera and Placido Domingo to throw anniversary open house

Los Angeles Opera will throw open the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s doors for a daylong open house of free programs, tours and displays on Nov. 5 to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Billing it as “our largest community outreach event,” General Director Placido Domingo said Wednesday in an announcement that the aim is to “introduce new friends to our work” while giving established opera buffs “a closer look at all of the elements that combine to create world-class opera.”

The company, then known as Music Center Opera, debuted Oct. 7, 1986, with Domingo starring in Verdi's "Otello" and Lawrence Foster conducting. The director was Goetz Friedrich.

For the anniversary celebration, Domingo and L.A. Opera’s music director, James Conlon, will jointly conduct two concerts (11 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.) featuring soloists from the company’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program, accompanied by the L.A. Opera orchestra. Domingo and Conlon will answer questions after each concert.  At 2 p.m., they will meet the public in the lobby, to autograph programs and other paraphernalia, including CDs and DVDs that will be on sale.

Also onstage in the main auditorium, at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., will be “The Prospector,” a half-hour opera geared toward children aged 4 to 10 and their families.  The work by composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks is inspired by Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” (The Girl of the Golden West).

Opera review: Los Angeles Opera's 'Così fan Tutte'

Los Angeles Opera opened its 26th season Saturday evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with an anemic, sexless new production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” On Sunday afternoon, the company unveiled a sexy, red-blooded new production of Mozart’s “Così fan Tutte.” The difference was, so to speak, night and day.

“Così" begins with two overconfident youths, about to marry sisters and about to have their understanding of women tested. Ferrando sings a short line about his Dorabella, vowing that nothing could sway her faith. Saimir Pirgu’s tenor was reedy but sword-sharp.

Guglielmo echoes the sentiment. His Fiordiligi is honest as the day. Here Ildebrando D’Arcangelo revealed, in but seven sprightly measures of the score, an opulent bass-baritone with enough presence to rock the Pavilion.

Photos: Los Angeles Opera's 'Così fan Tutte'

That’s all it took to signal something special. The young cast of this “Così” is cause for celebration.